By timothy from Slashdot's one-hand-behind-your-back department:Nerval's Lobster writes "One of the 600 3D-printed objects on display at a new London Science Museum exhibit is a Terminator-lookalike prosthetic arm designed by a 3D printing research group at the University of Nottingham, to demonstrate how printers can create both strong structural pieces, multi-directional joints and electronics to power touch sensors as part of a single process. "It's a mock-up but it shows circuits that sense temperature, feel objects and control the arm's movement," according to Richard Hague, director of the university's Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Research Group. The design is a step up in complexity from Robohand, an open-source engineering project launched in 2011 to design printable prostheses for those who have lost fingers or hands. The project posted many of its designs, including a full set of anatomically driven mechanical fingers, online for free download. Other manufacturers are exploring how robotics can best intersect with the human body and its need for replacement parts: pieces from 17 manufacturers went into "The Incredible Bionic Man," a full-body robotic prostheses assembled from artificial organs, limbs and other parts to demonstrate the current state-of-the-art for a Smithsonian Channel documentary due to air Oct. 20. The robot is 6'7, and able to stand and take a step with assistance; it contains a functioning heart, kidney, arms, legs, eyes and other parts. It also has a prosthetic, mobile face designed as a replacement for people who have lost noses or other features to accidents or disease."

By timothy from Slashdot's ok-this-feels-intuitive department:MojoKid writes "It's been a long time since many have seen a dreaded "blue screen of death" (BSoD), but it's back and in the in the most unlikeliest of places. Oddly enough, some Apple iPhone 5S owners are reporting BSoD errors, though they're a little different from the ones you may remember seeing on Windows desktops. Rather than spit out an obscure error code with a generic description, some iPhone 5S devices are suddenly turning blue before automatically restarting. The Numbers app in Apple's iWork suite, a free program with new iPhones, seems to be the primary cause, though BSoD behavior has also been observed in other applications, according to complaints in Apple's support forum."

By timothy from Slashdot's where-the-humans-come-in department:cartechboy writes "Ahh Twitter. Sometimes when you combine lightening fast information distribution and humans, minor (or not-so-minor) chaos can ensue. Yesterday, the Israeli military tweeted a commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war, which took place in 1973. But the tweet referenced the bombing of Syrian airports by Soviets, and oil traders, already an antsy group, assumed the tweet referred to an attack occurring that very moment. As you can imagine, this had some impact. Within an hour, the global price of oil jumped more than $1, from $110.40 to $111.50 as trading volumes soared. In the end, the traders missed a few things that would identify the tweet as historical vs imminent: Yom Kippur was weeks ago, the Soviet Union is no more, and most important, #checkthehashtag."

By Soulskill from Slashdot's isn't-politics-grand department:wjcofkc writes "In an ironic but welcome twist, the author of the Patriot Act, Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), is introducing the USA FREEDOM Act, a bill specifically aimed at countering the portions of the Patriot Act that were interpreted to let the NSA collect telephone metadata in bulk. The congressman has been a vocal opponent of the NSA's interpretation and misuse of the Patriot Act since Edward Snowden first leaked evidence of the program in June. On Wednesday, he wrote (PDF) to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that the 'collection of a wide array of data on innocent Americans has led to serious questions about how government will use — or misuse — such information.'"

By Soulskill from Slashdot's how-do-you-process-twelve-billion-data-points department:An anonymous reader writes "According to Wired, 'Today's big data is noisy, unstructured, and dynamic rather than static. It may also be corrupted or incomplete. ... researchers need new mathematical tools in order to glean useful information from the data sets. "Either you need a more sophisticated way to translate it into vectors, or you need to come up with a more generalized way of analyzing it," [Mathematician Jesse Johnson] said. One such new math tool is described later: "... a mathematician at Stanford University, and his then-postdoc ... were fiddling with a badly mangled image on his computer ... They were trying to find a method for improving fuzzy images, such as the ones generated by MRIs when there is insufficient time to complete a scan. On a hunch, Candes applied an algorithm designed to clean up fuzzy images, expecting to see a slight improvement. What appeared on his computer screen instead was a perfectly rendered image. Candes compares the unlikeliness of the result to being given just the first three digits of a 10-digit bank account number, and correctly guessing the remaining seven digits. But it wasn't a fluke. The same thing happened when he applied the same technique to other incomplete images. The key to the technique's success is a concept known as sparsity, which usually denotes an image's complexity, or lack thereof. It's a mathematical version of Occam's razor: While there may be millions of possible reconstructions for a fuzzy, ill-defined image, the simplest (sparsest) version is probably the best fit. Out of this serendipitous discovery, compressed sensing was born.'"

By Soulskill from Slashdot's you-thought-it-was-going-to-be-more-interesting,-didn't-you department:jfruh writes "Techno-enthusiasts have been predicting for years that cell phones will become one of the main means that we use to pay for items — but most Americans stubbornly cling to cash and credit cards, mostly because cash and credit cards are infinitely more convenient. In order to woo people into buying things electronically, merchants need to make phone purchases better than traditional payment systems, not just another option. The fast food industry is leading the way with a plethora of apps that make ordering remotely a snap."

By Soulskill from Slashdot's forcibly-recommending-a-new-line-of-work department:quantr tips this news from Bloomberg:"A Chinese journalist who posted allegations of corrupt dealings during the privatization of state-owned assets has been formally arrested on a defamation charge, his lawyer said. The Beijing People's Procuratorate approved Liu Hu's arrest on Sept. 30, lawyer Zhou Ze said by phone yesterday. Liu, who worked for the Guangzhou-based New Express, had been in detention since Aug. 24, according to Zhou. Liu's arrest adds to evidence that the government is stepping up a crackdown against people who go online with revelations of official malfeasance. At the same time that the Communist Party has vowed to get tough on corruption, authorities have targeted outspoken bloggers and announced that people who post comments deemed defamatory could face as much as three years behind bars."

By Soulskill from Slashdot's please-comply department:An anonymous reader writes "Mesa and its open-source Intel graphics driver now are in compliance with the OpenGL 3.2 specification (PDF). It took four years for Mesa to get up to GL 3.2 / GLSL 1.50 compliance, and support for the other Mesa drivers isn't too far behind, but they're still years behind in supporting OpenGL 4. Supporting a major new OpenGL API has resulted in Mesa 10.0 being called the next release. It has many other features, like performance improvements and new Gallium3D features. OpenGL 3.3 support might also be completed prior to the Mesa 10.0 release in November."

By Soulskill from Slashdot's enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend department:museumpeace writes "From its own EmTech conference, Technology Review reports on a privacy strategy from Microsoft's Craig Mundie: When sharing music online took off in the 1990s, many companies turned to digital rights management (DRM) software as a way to restrict what could be done with MP3s and other music files — only to give up after the approach proved ineffective and widely unpopular. Today Craig Mundie, senior advisor to the CEO at Microsoft, resurrected the idea, proposing that a form of DRM could be used to prevent personal data from being misused."Mundie also thinks it should be a felony to misuse that data. He thinks larger penalties would help deter shady organizations from harvesting data the user isn't even aware of. "More and more, the data that you should be worried about, you don’t even know about."

By Soulskill from Slashdot's satisfyingly-rounder-than-the-square department:Nick Kolakowski writes"Here are the lessons imparted by Dave Eggers' The Circle, his new novel about the rise of a fictional technology company clearly modeled on Google or Facebook: 1) Sharing content with people online is a poor substitute for having real-life experiences with, like, kayaking and family gatherings and drinking and stuff. 2) Unless stopped, companies that build social-networking tools will create increasingly intrusive software. 3) The only sure way to stay sane our increasingly interconnected (Eggers would say over-connected) world is to drive at high speed off a bridge."Read below for the rest of Nick's review. The Circle author Dave Eggers pages 504 publisher Knopf rating 8/10 reviewer Nick Kolakowski ISBN 0385351399 (ISBN-10); 978-0385351393 (ISBN-13) summary Sharing content with people online is a poor substitute for having real-life experiences

By Soulskill from Slashdot's activate-point-defense-lasers department:The Bad Astronomer writes "It sounds like a scene from Gravity: Astronauts aboard the International Space Station Thursday saw a weird, glowing cloud of light in the distance, most likely caused by a fuel dump or leaking fuel from a Russian missile launch. The extended life of a Topol missile was being tested in a ballistic launch to a test target in Kazakhstan, and the astronauts were able to take pictures of both the launch vapor trail and the glowing cloud. This event is similar to the eerie spiral lights seen over Norway in 2009 caused by a Russian missile launch as well."

By Soulskill from Slashdot's forcibly-recommending-a-new-line-of-work department:quantr tips this news from Bloomberg:"A Chinese journalist who posted allegations of corrupt dealings during the privatization of state-owned assets has been formally arrested on a defamation charge, his lawyer said. The Beijing People's Procuratorate approved Liu Hu's arrest on Sept. 30, lawyer Zhou Ze said by phone yesterday. Liu, who worked for the Guangzhou-based New Express, had been in detention since Aug. 24, according to Zhou. Liu's arrest adds to evidence that the government is stepping up a crackdown against people who go online with revelations of official malfeasance. At the same time that the Communist Party has vowed to get tough on corruption, authorities have targeted outspoken bloggers and announced that people who post comments deemed defamatory could face as much as three years behind bars."

By Soulskill from Slashdot's diamonds-are-a-leviathan's-best-friend department:Taco Cowboy writes "Back in 1999, it was postulated that diamonds may rain from the sky in the atmospheres of our solar system's gas giants. Now, research has shown that diamond rains on Saturn are more than probable. '"We don't want to give people the impression that we have a Titanic-sized diamondberg floating around," said researcher Mona Delitsky, of California Specialty Engineering, "We're thinking they're more like something you can hold in your hand." Recent data compiled by planetary scientists ... has been combined with newly published pressure temperature diagrams of Jupiter and Saturn. These diagrams, known as adiabats, allow researchers to decipher at what interior level that diamond would become stable. They also allow for calculations at lower levels – regions where both temperature and pressure are so concentrated that diamond becomes a liquid. Imagine diamond rain or rivulets of pure gemstone.' 'At even greater depths, the scientists say the diamond will eventually melt to form liquid diamond, which may then form a stable ocean layer.'